Va. Power, Shipyard Lose Bid To Build Waste Cask

June 22, 1993|By BARRY FLYNN Daily Press

The Department of Energy has turned down a request from Virginia Power to fund development of a nuclear-waste container that would be built at Newport News Shipbuilding, a spokesman for the utility said Monday.

Instead, the department plans to have a company already under contract develop a conceptual design and put out a request for bids for construction, a DOE official said.

But spokesmen for both Virginia Power and the shipyard said Monday that their companies still hold out the hope of getting work from the project eventually.

Virginia Power last year asked for federal money to pay for design and construction of a "universal cask" that would have served as both a shipping container and a long-term storage vessel for the intensely radioactive spent nuclear fuel produced by power plants.

The department is going to need some efficient way to handle the waste, because it will become responsible in 1996 for a large amount of such fuel that is currently stored at power plants around the country, said Jim Norvelle, a Virginia Power spokesman.

The project could have produced as much as $180 million a year in work for the shipyard and other manufacturers, William Stewart, a Virginia Power executive, estimated last year. Also, he predicted the yard might be able to start work as soon as this year.

In a rejection letter sent to the company last month, a Department of Energy official said the utility's proposal "does not offer a unique or innovative approach to spent fuel management."

The department plans to have a company already under contract conduct "an eight month conceptual design evaluation" for such a container, according to the letter to Virginia Power from Ronald A. Milner, a DOE official.

Even so, Norvelle said Virginia Power was encouraged because Milner had said the utility's experience "would place them in a position to compete for follow-on competitive procurements."

Shipyard spokesman Jack Garrow said that when the DOE's request for proposals go out, "at that time, we'll get back into it."